Accessing DevFabric from outside Localhost

Question

Is it possible to access a WebApplication hosted on DevFabric (WebRole) from outside the hosting machine?

If possible, how can i achieve this.

Thanks.

Answer 1

The problem is not a trivial as it might seem, the problem is that the Development Fabric is married with 127.0.0.1, so it only accepts request comming from localhost, however you can trick this by routing all incomming calls for a specific port to "127.0.0.1" the following article describes the problem and how to fix it:

http://theazureexperience.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/accessing-a-web-role-in-development-fabric-from-another-machine/

let me know if anyone has a similar issue and i'll be more than willing to help.

-Miguel

Answer 2

If you are using SDK 1.3 or later, since the local web role will be deployed in IIS it can be accessed if you open the port 81, 82, 83, etc. on your firewall. But there's a annoying problem. Since the local emulator will select the first valid port after 80 and 443, your website might have a dynamically port assigned. I guess you want to have this website binding with a continue integration server, I would like to recommend you remove all deployments before this build, to make sure the website utilize 81 and 444 port (if HTTPS needed). Hope this helps.